She dug around in the bin, pulled an envelope, then another, both unopened. She handed them to Letty and said, “Credit card statements. He had a bank account with Wells Fargo, but he got those statements on his cell phone.”
Visa card. Letty said, “Uh, he’s your husband. I suspect it’d be technically better, legally, if you opened them.”
“Give them over here, then,” Turner said. Letty handed the envelopes back to her, and she ripped them open, glanced at the bills, and handed them to Letty. “The last two months, he hasn’t charged a single fuckin’ thing. That ain’t right. That fuckin’ Rand probably took him.”
Letty waited.
“Somebody killed him,” Turner said. She put her hands to her face, squeezed. Then, “Maybe . . . Maybe he’s still out there? Maybe he’s hiding someplace where he can’t use his charge card?”
“Maybe,” Letty said. “Kaylee, we’re doing this research, maybe we’ll find him. Do you know any names, people in Rand Low’s posse? Anything would help.”
“Well, I know two for sure. Max Sawyer, not a bad guy. He loves his guns. He might have shot some people, that’s the rumor, but . . . he never gave me no trouble at all. If he was gonna try to fuck something, I believe it’d be a .30-30. Then there’s Victor Crain, he is a bad man. He once caught me back by the washing machine when Stony was out in the yard with the grill, pushed me into a corner and put his hands on everything I got. Handsome man, though. Max was not a bad guy, but he and Vic was best friends, which I could never figure out. They were both in Rand’s posse, Vic was in the car-stealing gang. This was back before Rand went to prison.”
“What do you know about this posse? Was it just guys playing with guns? Was it political?” Letty asked.
“Yeah, they played with guns. They all had guns. They talked about being tactical, they wanted everybody to buy four-wheel-drive pickups with big tires so they could go cross-country. They talked about being white people, which seemed a little crazy to me. You’re white, so what? You know? That’s like saying you eat pork chops. I always thought they were like pretend Nazis. They have this little sticker they put on their car bumpers. Blue sticker with a green triangle on it, pointing up. I guess it was supposed to be a mountain. They were like an outlaw motorcycle gang, but with trucks.”
“Was there a woman with them?”
“Everybody had a woman. Or at least said they did. If you didn’t, it was like you were queer . . . They had this thing they did, joking with each other. They’d be talking about women they knew and they’d snap their fingers and point down to the ground, like they were telling some chick to drop down to her knees and blow them. I told Stony if he ever really did that to me, he best be wearing his armored jock strap ’cause if he weren’t, I’d kick his junk off.”
Turner kept asking for reassurance that Rivers might still be out there somewhere, not charging anything on his Visa card. Letty wasn’t interested in lying to her, so Kaiser did it, telling Turner that Rivers probably didn’t come back because he didn’t want to endanger her or the children.
“That’s probably it,” she said, showing some relief. “The kids, he loved the kids. Loves the kids.”
Letty asked if she could keep one of the Visa bills—“Maybe we could use some government computer to trace him,” she said. “We’ll let you know.”
Turner glanced toward the back of the mobile home, to the bedroom. “He left his laptop, which sorta worries me, because he usually took it when he was going somewhere. Didn’t use it for much of anything but email and porn . . .”
“Mind if I take a look?” Letty asked. “Could give me an idea where he went.”
Turner had to think about that, then said, “I guess. If he’s dead, it can’t hurt him. If he’s alive, and you find him, then at least I’d know.”